once more with feeling
by DSieya
Summary: Over nineteen years, Indiana Jones convinces himself that leaving Marion Ravenwood really was the best thing to do. indy/marion, oneshot, some language


**a/n:**indy, being good at self-delusion. he's almost as good at that as he is at being hot. seriously, he can use that whip on me anyday.

uumm. yeah. don't judge me on that comment.

uhh... hope you enjoy!

* * *

_1937_

When he was a kid, it took Indy years to learn how to take off his bandages. The cloth would dry with the cut, and taking off the bandage also meant that some of the scab was coming with it.

At first, bit by bit. Each little millimeter lifted stung, then subsided, then stung, then subsided… Finally, his father had pinned his arm onto the table and ripped the damn thing off. Jesus, that had hurt. But then it suddenly didn't.

It was with this rationale that last week he left his fiancée alone in the house that they had shared. He saw he was hurting her, and that he would continue to hurt her—he would leave her for months at a time, then come back to leave her again. They fought. Too much.

So he decided to rip himself out of her life—

yes, that was best.

_1938_

The light from the candle was very dim. The room flickered yellow and orange, and it was almost as dark as no light at all. But he didn't need that much for his present task. In either case, it would not do to wake Elsa.

The letter was long and rambling, and he couldn't remember after he sealed it whether he had properly explained the bandage analogy.

_1939_

Marion was strong, she could deal with this.

_1940_

Twice.

_1941_

Once more, he was in Germany, except now under very different circumstances.

This time, he thought about his girl he left behind.

_Not my girl_, he reminded himself.

He wondered if someone—one of his comrades, maybe, maybe even someone he knew, someone he could _see_ from here—had Marion Ravenwood waiting for him.

Indy kicked a wall. His foot did not forgive him.

_1942_

Indy found that it was easier for him—to fight, to be a _hero_, as they mislabeled him.

He was one of the few that didn't have anything to lose.

_1943_

_Good God_ (or whatever was up there that was letting this happen)—_it isn't as if this is good for my head, You know._

_1944_

Indy almost considered writing her, but then decided that she probably had happily forgotten.

_1945_

Even only seven years later, by now he was too old—too old, too old.

It wasn't the years, it was the mileage, and Indy was pretty sure that at this point he was topping off.

_1946_

Indy was in Asia now. He was hardly home for a week after the War before the University sent him back out again.

_1947_

Somehow—_somehow_, seriously, how the hell—he runs into Short Round. The kid is—well, not a kid, in his early twenties. He remembers—they had stayed up in a pretty seedy bar, drinking _something_, and then the place went temporarily fuzzy and painful and he woke up in a pigsty with blood on his knuckles—but he remembers that he had almost nicknamed the kid Short Stuff.

Then he realized that he had already baptized someone else with that name.

He preferred tall women anyway.

_1948_

Back to the University. The house wasn't lonely. The waitress at the restaurant was quite a beauty. Taller than even Indy, with her shoes on.

_1949_

A brunette walked past him, wearing a long white dress. His chest lurched. He hoped he wasn't having heart issues. (Was he really that old?)

_1950_

"Junior."

Indy walked to the bedside. He could bear to be obedient, with Henry Jones, Sr. on his deathbed.

"What happened to that girl you were going to marry?"

He had expected to be ordered to recite a prayer—in Latin—or something equally anticipatory. As it was, he was dumbfounded.

"Didn't work out," he muttered. He knew his father's hearing was terrible. It was slightly vindictive.

However, imminent death seemed to have done wonders to his father's eardrums.

"Shame. A mistake, too."

Oh great a lecture. Indy tuned him out.

_1951_

Even if she hadn't forgotten, it wasn't if she would want him back anyway.

_1952_

Especially—as he realized today when his doctor told him to ease up on "whatever the hell you're doing"—since he was gaining the old geezer status. She was still young.

_1953_

And it wasn't as if he wanted her, either. He had other things to focus on.

_1954_

Indiana realized that he was content. Happy, even.

_1955_

He still thought about her. Only occasionally, like how one wondered about an old friend that they hadn't thought about in years. (Except he thinks about her a lot. No. Occasionally. Didn't he already establish that it was only occasionally?

Yes. Occasionally.

He was too busy, anyway to think about her. Always too busy to think about her.

Not on purpose, of course.)

_1956_

Oh, fuck. It just never would have worked out. He didn't even want to get married. Not even to her.

_1957_

In the bar, talking to Mutt Williams, he had asked who his mother was.

"Mary—"—_on Ravenwood_, his mind automatically, dare he say hopefully, completed. But then the kid finished his sentence. "Mary Williams?" He said it as a question.

Indy had replied vaguely that he knew a lot of Marys. Which wasn't really true. But he didn't know what else to say. He wondered if he was getting senile.

Probably.

Apparently he looked _like eighty_.

…

Despite all this, when he saw her get dragged out of the tent, yelling and fighting and brown hair flying and then grinning and just overall Marion, he couldn't help the stupid smile from near breaking his face in half.

_Not because I missed her_, one weak part of his brain interjected.

_Oh, shut up_. And it did.


End file.
